Figuring Africa and China

This article asks how China has figured as a trope in Congolese literature from the Cold War and to the present. To do so, I analyze three texts: V.Y. Mudimbe’s Entre les eaux (Between Tides) (1973), In Koli Jean Bofane’s Congo Inc. (2014), and Fiston Mwanza Mujila’s Tram 83 (2014). I also examine how Mobutu interpolated Maoism into his dictatorship. I argue that whereas the Cold War produces figures such as the Maoist guerrilla, the radical intellectual, and the authoritarian leader, Chinese investment in the DRC facilitates the rise of new figures such as the mondialiste and the economic tourist. As a result, Third Worldism is ironically recast through the lens of a mutual “win-win” for development. This lens masks a new era of extractivism that produces its own social dislocations, which lends Pierre Mulélé’s Maoist-inspired rebellion a paradoxical relevance to DRC-PRC relations at the beginning of the twenty-first century.

Angela Davis: political activist, radical intellectual and an inspiration for social work

For many people, Angela Davis is, first and foremost, an icon of the 1960s, a near-mythic figure of that turbulent era and the many radical social causes we now associate with those years. She has spent five decades writing about racial capitalism, the political economy, woman and the prison–industrial complex. However, behind the icon and the image is a longer and more complicated story, one that today has important lessons for social workers and other activists alike. This article will trace her personal history, examine her political trajectory, provide an overview of a few of her principal writings and briefly discuss her connection with the theory and practice of social work.

THE POLISH QUESTION IN MYKHAILO KOLODZINSKY'S "UKRAINIAN MILITARY DOCTRINE"

The vision of the Polish question is analyzed on the base of M. Kolodzinsky's "Ukrainian military doctrine". The nature of the radical intellectual constructs of the early twentieth century in the OUN environment was studied. The general historical context is analyzed, which allows a deeper understanding ofthis phenomenonand reveals a broad picture of the development of contemporary political and social thought. The Ukrainian nationalists in the interwar period were particularly keen on the future strategy and tactics of gaining the Ukrainian state. A detailed review of the concepts and understanding of Ukrainian history in the "Military Doctrine" was made. The main features of the ideological convictions of M. Kolodzinskyi and the most radical wing of OUN members are determined.

Polycultural Phenomenology

The paper deals with the issue of the phenomenological foundations of polyculturalism on the basis of the categories of the following concepts: multi-layer being, concretization, intentionality, life world, and epoché. A comparison of phenomenology with eastern psychotechnics allows us to stress the importance of Husserl’s break with the tradition of speculative philosophy. Phenomenology is a pure experience of selfobservation. Such a radical intellectual position is similar to that of yoga and Buddhism which is also built after breaking with past traditions. They all reformat the cultural shell in order to reset and justify the experience of transcendental meditation. The achievement of the phenomenology lies not only in its reformist direction in philosophy, but also in that it solves the problem of overcoming the crisis of social sciences in Europe due to breaking the deadlock of speculative philosophy and positivism. Its universal value is in the development of cross-cultural research methodology, with the help of which such systems as Vedanta, yoga, Buddhism and phenomenology itself can be in a single intersubjective field. Keywords: phenomenology of culture, phenomenology of education, multiculturalism, Husserl, life world.

‘A Scientific Age’

This chapter focuses on the volumes on science. An introductory discussion of popular science writing leads to more detailed analyses of Haldane’s and Bernal’s key volumes. Their projection of biotechnological and bionic interventions in the human are examined as pioneers of trans-humanism. Their imaginative audacity is contrasted with the bland norms of contemporary futurology. They are seen as representative of the series in several ways: for their radical intellectual approach; their placing of science in relation to the arts and humanities; their commitment to public debate and education; their concerns with language and communication; and with psychology. The section concludes by establishing an essentially scientific paradigm (derived from Haldane and Bernal) for the whole series, arguing that this paradigm represents a transformation by science and technology of every aspect of life, from our experience of change, to a sense of agency, our politics, modes of thinking and feeling, and our ways of thinking about and expressing our imaginations of the future.

Self-Trust and Epistemic Humility

Some cognitive domains, like the moral, aesthetic, and religious, seem to demand a special kind of intellectual autonomy. We should, it is thought, think for ourselves and not trust others. This call for autonomy seems to support a radical intellectual self-sufficiency. In particular, the fact that our peers disagree with us can be disregarded by the fully intellectually self-sufficient person. I argue against radical intellectual self-sufficiency. I argue, instead, that our basis for self-trust in these domains should also extend to trusting others. So long as we do not have a good account of our own reliability in these domains, our general cognitive similarity to others ought to lead us to weight their testimony, and so weight their disagreement. We should be epistemically humble in the face of disagreement. Furthermore, epistemic humility here is a form of intellectual autonomy, for we discover the evidence of disagreement and think through its consequences for ourselves.

Women, Politics and the Public Sphere

This book is a socio-historical analysis of the relationship between women, politics and the public sphere. It looks at the legacy of eighteenth-century intellectual groupings which were dominated by women such as members of the ‘bluestocking circles’ and other more radical intellectual and philosophical thinkers such as Catherine Macaulay and Mary Wollstonecraft. These individuals and groups which emerged in the eighteenth century established ‘intellectual spaces’ for the emergence of women public intellectuals in subsequent centuries. Women public intellectuals in the US examined in the book include Samantha Power, Anne-Marie Slaughter, Elizabeth Warren, Condoleezza Rice, Susan Rice, Hillary Clinton, and Sheryl Sandberg. The implications for the political representation of women in the West and globally is considered, highlighting how women public intellectuals now reflect much more social and cultural diversity. The book is about the fault-lines established in the eighteenth century for later developments in social and political discourse.